Author: NY TIMES

At a reception for OpenAI’s first developer conference in San Francisco last month, a crowd mingled, wine in hand, as withering criticism of art created with artificial intelligence flashed on a blue wall at the front of the room. “I’ve seen more engaging art from a malfunctioning printer,” one critic jabbed. “The fine-art equivalent of elevator music,” huffed another. “Inoffensive, unmemorable and terminally dull.”It might seem an odd strategy for OpenAI, the company behind widely used generative A.I. tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, to promote scorn of A.I. art, until you catch the twist: A.I. itself wrote the criticism. Alexander…

When the Bronx-bred pianist Zita Carno auditioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1975, she played short excerpts from the orchestra’s repertoire for the music director, Zubin Mehta.“Then Mehta said, ‘Come back tomorrow. I want to hear you play the Boulez,’” she recalled years later, referring to the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.“Well, I said, ‘I eat that stuff for breakfast,’ which made him laugh.”Ms. Carno was hired and spent the next 25 years as the orchestra’s pianist, capping a career as a widely praised classical keyboardist (she also played the harpsichord and organ) who was also an expert…

As Israel pounded targets in the Gaza Strip from the air and sea on Wednesday, a member of the country’s war cabinet threatened action on a second front, along the border with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has fired rocket barrages into Israel.“I say to our friends around the world: The situation in the northern border necessitates change,” the war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, told reporters. “The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the…

In February 1961, The New York Times, citing a study by the American Medical Association, ran a brief article reporting that Americans could very well enjoy a life expectancy of 120 years during the 21st century.The A.M.A., reflecting a now bygone era perhaps more optimistic than our own, was foreseeing a continuing tide of medical science advances that would carry people along in good health for decade after decade.Suffice it to say that the 21st century still has a long way to go before anyone looking back from the 22nd will be able to confirm whether those medical authorities of…

Going out, once a hallmark of celebrity status, took a hit this past year. Amid entertainment industry strikes and global turmoil, it seemed like many of the folks who formerly sought to see and be seen threw on sweats and stayed in.That is, unless you crossed the velvet rope separating the plebeian world from the h.wood world, a gilded nightlife empire governed by John Terzian. As in Narnia and Oz, in h.wood, different rules apply.There will be martinis. There will be Art Deco-ish sconces. There will be lighting so dim that even those who consider themselves young may reach for…

The next time you’re on a plane, if the person next to you doesn’t seem to own anything that isn’t bright red, it might be Celia Paerels. Kindle case, sweater, sunglasses, headphones, charging cord, everything in shocking scarlet: It’s how she avoids leaving anything behind in the seat or the seat pocket.“Everybody clues into red,” said Ms. Paerels, 62, of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. “If you see a cardinal, you’ll know it’s a cardinal. You don’t notice a sparrow.”Ms. Paerels is one of more than 180 New York Times readers who responded to our invitation in September to share their favorite travel…

The Chinese spies wanted more. In meetings during the pandemic with Chinese technology contractors, they complained that surveillance cameras tracking foreign diplomats, military officers and intelligence operatives in Beijing’s embassy district fell short of their needs.The spies asked for an artificial intelligence program that would create instant dossiers on every person of interest in the area and analyze their behavior patterns. They proposed feeding the A.I. program information from databases and scores of cameras that would include car license plates, cellphone data, contacts and more.The A.I.-generated profiles would allow the Chinese spies to select targets and pinpoint their networks and…

“The music stays as beautiful as it is,” said Andreas Staier, an eminent interpreter of early keyboard music who has a rare blood disease. Source link

Israeli news outlets had previously quoted survivors of the massacre saying that an Israeli tank had fired on a house where Hamas fighters were holding hostages during the lengthy battle to retake Be’eri. In an article published on Friday by The New York Times, the Israeli commander who led the fight detailed how he had authorized tank fire to end what was already an hourslong standoff — “even at the cost of civilian casualties.”Those remarks have been picked up by the Israeli news media and prompted some public debate about the conduct of the commander, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram. Only…

A court in Siberia on Friday sentenced an ally of the jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to nine years in a penal colony for running an “extremist organization,” according to her legal team. The sentence signals the Kremlin’s willingness to continue cracking down on members of Mr. Navalny’s political group years after it was banned in Russia.In 2020, the defendant, Ksenia V. Fadeyeva, won a seat in the municipal parliament in the Siberian city of Tomsk, a position she occupied while she was also the coordinator of Mr. Navalny’s political office in the region.Mr. Navalny, the only politician…